Jagged Reflection
by ManualImpact
Summary: The wall crawler's least favorite day of the year.


Disclaimer: I wish I owned a Spider-Man. Just gimme the suit, and I'll show you what I can do. I wouldn't ask for wealth or fame, but I might just use it to become a professional wrassler! But I promise I won't make ANY money!!  
  
JAGGED REFLECTION  
  
November 23.  
  
As a superhero, there are many days that stick out like stalagmites within the recesses of my mind. As a man, I know there are bound to be countless more. Rudy Guiliani once said ", the measure of a man is not that he has no fear, rather that he respects fear enough to get up and try anyways."  
  
I don't fear this day. I dread it. I dread the emotional baggage it always brings with it.  
  
Though I try not to dwell on it, mine is a life rife with loss. My parents left when I was too young to understand what loss truly was. More importantly, there were no answers; their deaths went unexplained for years. In my early teens, I failed.I lost my Uncle Ben. Directly after that, I donned a flashy costume and set about making new bonds that would end in time: girlfriends, co-workers, costumed acquaintances, and even villains (though some might say that the worst of them ALWAYS come back).  
  
I've lost more people than I care to remember, so I supposed I began to think I was prepared for loss. I was wrong. God decided to remind me of this when he took my brother from me.on the same day my unborn child was taken.  
  
Ben.  
  
Little May.  
  
Oh, how I miss you.  
  
The promise of the man I was. I promise of what could have been.  
  
I dare say I would even trade the realization that I was not a clone, just to save Ben from the Clone Degeneration.  
  
I would give anything to have been able to hold my daughter ONE time.just once.  
  
Ben Reilly was a clone, "grown" from my DNA by a villain better left forgotten. To say I didn't trust Ben would be an understatement. After all, he was sent to take over my life. It may not have been a life to write the alumni board about, but it was still my life. He was dispatched and forgotten, like so many foes in my alter-ego's life.  
  
But, like so many other foe's, he reappeared some five years down the line. I didn't recognize him, and he presumably didn't recognize Spider-Man. At the time I was a Tyler Durden away from hitting bottom. I didn't care about much of anything. The Osborn legacy had reached beyond the grave to choke the life out of the Parker family. Before he died, my best friend Harry had arranged to have simulations made of my parents, just to have them "die" before my very eyes. The shock caused Aunt May a stroke. MJ left me. And I was a wreck. I hated Peter Parker. I finally understood what so many enemies despised in me.  
  
It was at that very moment I spied Ben Reilly peeking in on Aunt May at the hospital.  
  
I lashed out at him, thinking he was back to take my life away from me again. To make a long story short, in the end he saved me. Not just from those who sought to destroy me, but invariably from myself.  
  
Are we genetically pre-determined to fill the roles God has placed us in? Can a man truly be a victim of his surroundings? In essence, does external turmoil give a man carte blanche to do whatever he wants? If so, where was the line that once separated me from the likes of Venom, Dr Octopus, Mysterio, and the like? It was gone. I was tainted, and would never be the same again.  
  
Yet here stood this man, wearing Peter Parker's face, preaching Peter Parker's woes, feeling Peter Parker's pain. But he still stood up for what was right, even the angry Web head that tried to rearrange his face.  
  
He hadn't dealt with the issues I had in the past few months (well, for the past five years, now that I think about it), but his optimism resonated radiantly. Even in the months that followed, he never gave up. Not when the odds were against him, not when the Bugle labeled him a fraud, and my reading public vilified him and his new costume. Not when his only friend altered his genetic testing to determine which one of us was, indeed, the clone. Even in the end, he remained a hero.  
  
Norman Osborn had returned from the dead, and beaten Ben within an inch of our life. Bruised, battered, wearing a costume torn to shreds, Ben let me handle Osborn, while he looked after the innocents Osborn had trapped within the Bugle. But he couldn't leave well enough alone, and returned to the scene with scant seconds to save me from being impaled by a Goblin Glider.  
  
What happened next is still a blur. I know that I dealt with Norman; it was swift but all too fleeting. Then I watched in horror as a man with my face, a man who I called 'brother' began to deteriorate at the molecular level.  
  
He said ", take care of that family, Peter. Especially that baby girl.  
  
"Tell her.about her Uncle Ben."  
  
And then he was gone, in more ways than one.  
  
I never got to tell my daughter of HER Uncle Ben.  
  
I didn't even get to tell her about my Uncle Ben.  
  
Later that same night, I found my wife in the hospital. A routine check-up had turned into a nightmare. MJ went into labor. MJ went into labor while I was fighting some megalomaniac at the Daily Bugle.  
  
Worse still, she'd.she had a miscarriage.  
  
Once again, my life began to spiral out of control. But I refused to let it. If Ben taught me one thing, it's that I've survived worse.  
  
Just when I think I've met my breaking point, I think back. I remember what my breaking point was before this moment. How much straw did it take back then? How much stronger am I as a result? Is this really any worse than what I've lived through thus far?  
  
Most importantly I realize that no matter what happens to me, if it doesn't kill me, then I'm still alive. I'm still going strong. Whatever doesn't kill better run and hide.  
  
My parent's unexplained death was my first foray into science. It was the first time I can remember asking "why?" and receiving no response.  
  
Uncle Ben's death taught me "with great power, comes great responsibility."  
  
Gwen's death taught me that nothing is etched in stone.  
  
The death of Ben Reilly taught me that only I was master of my own destiny.  
  
And little May?  
  
May taught me that I CAN still hurt.and that I can still go on. 


End file.
